Opinion/Editorial

WHAT’S TO BE DONE

Many years ago, the word ‘liar’ was a badge of complete dishonor if assigned to one, no matter what the allegedly lie was regarding.  That word, in today’s cultural milieu, has become one that is without consequence.  Lying is disregarded as being anti or exo-cultural.  Branding is in.  Getting known, no matter how has become acceptable and lying is a big part of the best way to get known.  Lying has become de rigor when it comes to politics, sports, business, and even police enforcement.

Dick Cheney, Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, Ann Coulter, Bill Clinton and so many more paved the way for others to take up the cause of self-branding and have such actions overpower former strictures and accountability for fracturing reality; and doing it right in front of everyone.

Get known.  Gather an audience.  Get funded by that audience.  Be protected by that audience.  Lying has become a part of the American system of jurisprudence.  It’s called plea bargaining.  A suspect pleads, under oath, to a lesser charge to avoid draconian punishment for whatever the real crime was.  The suspect stands in court and pleads to and apologizes for a crime never committed. The judge, the prosecutor, and everyone in the court knows the crime pled to was never committed.  The lie is accepted, and the system has become near terminally damaged as the lying goes on with everyone’s approval.  Police officers in trouble sometimes lie and say they feared for their lives when they shoot some unarmed suspect in the back who’s running away from them.  The lie is accepted, in fact, accepted by a decision of the Supreme Court that such lies are not lies at all. What does a culture do when the reality is submerged under such a surface area of star-powered duplicity?  The mass media goes right along with this ever-shifting, but ever-expanding duplicity, because the mass media is ever more only about branding.  Unless something can emerge to the top of the news scum above the fast-becoming famous people lying their butts off, it’s not getting any kind of national attention.

How can society recover itself from having turned into a reward and approval culture that supports only one thing, and that’s the new definition of success?  Success today is creating, collecting, and holding attention.  The Internet helped foster this kind of definition.  The movie Wall Street is famous for the quote (and the representations of other forms of socially predatory behavior) “greed is good.”  The Michael Douglas delivered speech near the end of the movie has been taken, not as an indictment of a flawed financial system but as a primer for establishing present and future relationships throughout all of society.  Almost subliminally, the entire capitalistic system of the United States has become oriented to accepting the movie’s premise and that quote as being something that’s not only acceptable but should be applauded and supported.

What’s to be done to stop this monstrous and radical change to the social structure of an entire country?  Identification is the first step that must be taken.  There should be no ability to have any presence on the Internet without credible self-identification.  Initially, identification, and therefore ascription and accountability, will eliminate the most damaging trolling, as we’ve come to know it, and begin eliminating the use of experimental lies and deliberate deception to build the branding of the person or entity doing it.  Second, the media must be held to a higher standard than it is currently when it publishes what it knows to be lies, and the ‘knowing’ definition must be tightened considerably. Third, organizations and supporters closely tied financially and publicly with ‘stars’ must be held to be as accountable as the stars when those empowered individuals lie to the public.  The Green Bay Packers were fined when Aaron Rodgers, their MVP quarterback, lied to the public in an interview and got caught lying.  The fine was nonsense to that organization and to the star himself.  That needs to be changed.  The fines should have been in the millions, not thousands.  Thousands to these mega-stars and the pro sports organizations are like pennies to the regular public. Finally, there needs to be a return to education in our schools at all levels to actually reward telling the truth.

Today, telling the truth almost always leads to a following tail of punishment.  In a job interview of today, if a prospect admits to something negative about him or herself, no what the matter is about, is thanked and then rejected from consideration.  The one thing that cannot be overcome in any way, in the mind of this article’s author, is what is to be done about such a large measure of today’s public that will no longer believe credentialed, vested and long-examined officials and scientists, no matter what the subject under discussion or consideration is.  How do we, once again, return to a time when credentials, long study, and hard-won education degrees mean something again.   The nation’s two top pundits on Fox have no advanced degrees in anything, and, in fact, Mr. Hannity has no degree at all.  Millions upon millions of people, however, believe these two people over all other scientists and real credentialed people.  These two, alone, in their expressed beliefs about vaccinations, have cost thousands of people their lives, but those deaths are neve attributed to them.  The United States must, at all costs, return to a time of responsibility, accountability, and attribution, to be applied to every citizen in every walk of life and using every form of communication.  Unless these things can be done, then there should be no fear of another civil war.  There won’t need to be.   The country will merely continue to sink into a morass of vapid complaining humans slowly and unknowingly going the way of the Neanderthals.